Stanford transferred for drug addiction treatment

HOUSTON 
Former Texas billionaire and financier R. Allen Stanford has been moved from the federal detention center in Houston, where he awaits trial on charges he bilked investors out of $7 billion in a pyramid scheme.

The move comes after a federal judge last month ordered Stanford's transfer for treatment of drug addiction that has helped render him incompetent to stand trial.

A U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman said Tuesday that Stanford left Houston on Monday, but a gag order in the case prevented the spokesman or Stanford's attorney from saying where the financier was taken.

The judge's order recommended taking Stanford to a medical facility at the federal prison in Butner, N.C., where jailed financier Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence.